One of my best customers, Jen, bought a shirt from me recently as a gift for her mom. Well the ladies were sweet enough to send me some mother/daughter photos today. Jen is wearing her Riley dress and Barb has the Greta shirt. Don’t they look fabulous!!!
Jen and Barb
Jen and Barb
Getting the bags packed up for another Randolph Market this weekend. For the first time the June Market will coincide with the Taste of Randolph festival going on a little further east. I haven’t been but sure sounds like fun. You can sample the fare of the numerous Randolph restaurants, listen to music, maybe even a little dancing in the streets, and then jump on the trolley to come see us at Plumbers Hall. Weather is supposed to be cooperative.
Randolph Market
I was near the Anthropology store on State Street in Chicago not long ago and saw this fascinating window display. They made this out of plastic bottles. Can you believe it? These guys are so creative!
Anthropology Window
One of the events on the calendar this month was a shopping event sponsored by the well known Gen Art group. Long known as a key promoter of small, independent designers, I was looking forward to exhibiting at the SHOP Chicago event. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I returned from my New York events to find an email indicating that Gen Art has been another victim of the economy and has shut their doors effective immediately. Ouch! Another fashion industry loss and another loss for the small designer.
It’s been one of those kind of weeks for me. Things just not going quite right. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about as we all continue to react to/struggle with the economy, is that I am imagining the retail arena becoming one big mass merchant. As boutique owners are squeezed financially, they too move toward safe buys, known labels. I get it. They have to survive too but where does that leave the fashion consumer who doesn’t want to look like a walking ad for J Crew or a Lucky magazine spread? Does anyone else care? Or is the “malling” of America okay for most consumers? I don’t do much wholesale business (intentionally) but one does need to plan and think about what’s next. This affects the retail climate regardless of whether I choose to move my business toward wholesale, do the brick and mortar thing myself, or push harder on internet. How do I want my business to grow and evolve? What will retailing look like 2 years from now?
Don’t have any answers right now. Maybe wishing for the crystal ball. I guess I’m just feeling a little introspective business-wise today and giving thought to my own path forward. I’ll take ideas/thoughts if you have them!
When I travel to New York I have a few spots that are usually on the to-do list. One is a visit to Kate’s Paperie. The 57th street store seems to be the most convenient when I’m on a fabric buying trip and the window displays are always fabulous. On my February trip, the schedule was tight and I could only manage a walk-by after hours. Luckily for me, I found a display of paper dresses. I should pin up a photo in the studio of this to reference when I’m fighting with an uncooperative fabric. Even the most challenging of fabrics I work with don’t hold a candle to the difficulty in making paper do this!
Paper Dresses
Here’s a quick look at a new top that I have in production now. Cotton jersey. Cutting it in a light gray vs the charcoal shown. Anyway the fun part of this top is the built in scarf. The draped piece that looks like a cowl (the scarf) is shirred, attached across the back shoulder blades, but loose from there so it has a lot of style options. The scarf part can be worn off the shoulder more like a shrug or even lifted over your head like a hood.
Scarf Top
Earlier this week, my friend and fellow designer, Sandy Adams came by the studio to set up a photo shoot. Sandy does these exquisite felted pieces. Unlike most felting, her work is light and drapey with very sophisticated colors. I had such a great time seeing how well her product worked with mine. I snapped a couple shots to show off. These pieces are scarves that Sandy styled to look almost like a vest. A simple thin belt would work to achieve this look. The mannequin is also wearing my Milkmaid Skirt. Check out Sandy’s work, the detail is stunning!
Sandy Adams Felted Scarf
Sandy Adams Felted Scarf #2
Julie and I have settled on a date for our next Open Studio event. It’s going to be Saturday April 10th from 11 – 4. With any luck the weather will be better than last month!
Open Studio - March
It was an exciting end to the week. I took delivery of some super duper new toys – a major cutting table and my first industrial coverstitch machine (it’s for hemming knits). Now the hard work, we have to get them set up!
table tops
table legs
coverstitch still on the pallet
machine head still in box
Most of us have a love hate relationship with email marketing messages. It can be a fast easy way to learn about a sale or an event and certainly preferable to postal mail for that type of information but the rub is that sometimes marketers go too far with the frequency of their mailings. Do I really need daily messages from that art supply company I ordered from once 9 months ago? At last nights open studio, we were talking about email marketing a little bit and it got me mulling over this subject, again.
Small business like mine struggle with this constantly. How often should we send email marketing? What’s the line between appropriate sharing of information and being a pest? What’s the best timing to send an email prior to an event? A week? A month? A day? Too far in advance and people forget. Too close and they can’t plan. If you send one a few weeks ahead and a reminder the day before, is it helpful or annoying? What if you have several events in one month? Do you do separate mailings for each or one that covers the whole month? Well that one’s pretty easy, I sure as heck don’t want 15 marketing emails a month from anyone. I haven’t consulted with any email marketing pros but my feelings lean toward the conservative side. Once a month with a possible “special event” email to be used just occasionally is the tactic I’m going to commit to. I can revisit the subject in six months and see if customers have any feedback. Speak up if you have thoughts to share!
There is another issue that I don’t have an answer for yet. My email list comes 100% from people who have given me their address at a show or signed up for my newsletter online. Online is easy, the customer controls the data entry. But at a show I’m running into a problem reading peoples handwriting. At a small event I can usually double check while the customer is standing there but at a busy show, forget it. We had far too many email addresses from the One of a Kind show that we just couldn’t make out some portion. The only immediately obvious solution is higher level staffing so that we can confirm but that has it’s drawbacks too. Something to mull over.
In the mean time, if you happen to be reading this and gave me your email address at One of a Kind but have not received a newsletter from me that means I couldn’t decode some of the letters and my little newsletter ended up in the email black hole instead of your inbox. You can re-sign up on the website if you’d like. Thanks!
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